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and running. ----------- Are bachelor parties really testosterone-fueled bacchanals that degrade women? The Name Game Racing
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Summer 2007 | For my new book, Bachelor Party Confidential: A Real Life-Peek Behind the Closed-Door Tradition, I talked with more than 100 people from all over the country and globe. Men from different generations, classes and backgrounds. I chatted with, among others, two strippers, a dwarf, an S&M clown, a Vegas bouncer and a woman who crashed her fiancé's party. I spoke with religious grooms, wary brides and the fathers who love them. I wanted to know what the bachelor party ritual meant to each of them, how it's affected their relationships and how it's changed over the years. I offered total anonymity to everyone. In return, they served up a grab bag of painful, poignant, secret, and salacious stories. Stories I sensed that many had been dying to tell for years. Here are two excerpts: The Lesbian Stripper
Mary G. Mary G., a smart, together stripper turned corporate lawyer, danced
at bachelor parties in the middle class and wealthy suburbs of Southern
California from 1989 to 1991. A lesbian, she did her best to minimize
the contact with the men and maximize her tips. While she has seen
plenty of esteem-challenged women dance for the compliments and
attention of men, she was never one of them. "I was out as a dyke at
that point, so I didn't need validation from the men I was dancing for.
For me it was a simple equation: Is it safe? Can I get money?" There was some fear of the unknown in the beginning, like, "Can I
really pull this off? Can I pass as a straight stripper?" It was also
performance anxiety: "Is the music going to work? Can I gracefully
unclip my bra?" In retrospect, if that's your biggest worry, great. I was never really worried about my safety, because the psychological
dynamics of bachelor parties are similar to almost any group: For every
bad person, there's the person who wants to do good; for every person
who wants to scare you, there's the person who wants to save you. And if
you can identify them, you can usually play them off each other. The best man, for instance, was usually the point person and the
ambassador, and he was the one I would tell, "I am going to end up
leaving if you can't keep your friends in line, and I am going to really
lean on you. And you have more responsibility, because I trust you. But
if your friends cross the line, I'm outta here." And that can be a real
downer: Nobody wants to have the stripper running out of the party with
half her clothes on; that is not the story you want to tell the next
day. Now, as a lawyer, I do these same things to judges that I did to
the best man: make them feel like they want to do the right thing and
that they are important and special. At a bachelor party you win or lose people's confidence within the
first five minutes. So, to start off, I would walk in and basically
outline to everyone, "This is what's going to happen: I'm going to do
two sets; the first set is for the bachelor. Then I'm going to take a
five-minute break, and then we're going to play tipping games. We'll
talk more about that when I come back out." When I tell people I used to work at bachelor parties, they say, "Oh
my gosh, that must have been so chaotic, being in a room full of one
hundred men." It actually was very structured and more than half the
time these guys were scared shitless-so much more nervous than I could
ever be-and actually not really even sexualizing the whole experience;
it would end up being more of an anatomy class. And they were nervous
about being around explicit sexuality with their peers looking at them.
They were worried about how they were responding: Are they into it
appropriately or are they not into it appropriately? Each and every
person in the room was so self-conscious. I was actually surprised that so many men know so little about female
anatomy. I would do vibrator shows and the guys would go and get
flashlights. It became not so much an erotic thing; it was more like,
"What? That's a vagina?" And these are guys that are about to get
married! These are doctors, attorneys, cops, firefighters, feds, frat
boys, professors, military people, engineers, bikers, farm
workers-anyone and everyone you could imagine. When we got into the tipping games, the erotic thrill was a little
bit more between them. It was, "I'm going to give you five dollars to go
and do that to my friend." It wasn't so much "me, me, me"; it was more,
"I want to see my friend either squirm or have to do something sexual."
For one dollar, I would take that dollar from anywhere. Typically
people would tuck it into the top of their pants or their button-down
shirt, or put it in their mouth. There was a lot of unsanitary money
exchanging going on. For five dollars they could lick whipped cream off
of a nipple. For ten dollars, they could lick it off both breasts. Twenty dollars was the clincher; it was called "feed the kitty." I
would take the twenty, roll it up like you were going to snort a line,
and they would put it in their mouth. I would have them lay on the
floor, and I would crouch over them and I would pick it up with my
vagina; there was absolutely no contact, just with the money. I
practiced it beforehand with my girlfriend. It didn't take very long to
perfect it, but I did figure out exactly how it needed to be rolled up
and exactly how much of the twenty needed to be in his mouth in order to
do the trick without any contact. And then, by literally looking up at
my own vagina with a mirror, I figured out how to do it in a somewhat
erotic way. That was the big money-maker-always. And then I was out of there-hopefully one thousand dollars wealthier.
No, that's not true; sometimes there were other offers that got worked
out beforehand or when I announced the tipping games.
Basically, you're chasing the money; you negotiate the fee, and part
of it is gauging-how much do these people have? If you overshoot, you
lose the whole deal. You know, sixty bucks, one hundred bucks, one
hundred fifty bucks, whatever it was-and I would set a certain time
limit, one song. If they want another song, "Okay, another eighty bucks." There could be an oil-and-vibrator show. Usually the vibrator show
was, let me put oil on myself and then I will lay on the ground and
writhe to the music and turn a vibrator on, lick it, and put it in my
vagina. Again, they'd get out the flashlights and were fascinated with,
"How big is the vibrator? Is it bigger than my dick? How much can fit in
a vagina?" Sometimes I would pretend to orgasm. And when we did two-woman
shows-they never called it a lesbian show-I would always have an
"orgasm" with the friend that I worked with; we would almost be
laughing. We would grind on each other and we would time it like, "Okay,
now." If men actually knew how women orgasm, they would have been like,
"That is so fake."
I probably did about a hundred fifty bachelor parties in three years.
Sometimes there would be three on Friday night and three on Saturday
night. Other weekends, nothing-it was very seasonal. But every party was
the same: You had the same stuff, the same attitude; the guys were
interchangeable. But every party was also a little outrageous, because you got this
little glance into these people's lives and their environment. For
example, I did a show for these farm workers in the middle of this field
on their machinery. That was my stage-this flatbed truck and the
machinery. The most uncomfortable one was for these professors from the
university where I was a student. Superuncomfortable-too close to home.
And one time we did a show at a phenomenal winery. It was a
superextravagant party, because these people owned the winery and had a
mansion on the property. They laid down probably three to four grand for
two of us, and gave us each a case of wine. But whether it was at a winery or on a flatbed truck, it was the same
thing, the same dynamic. And it really was a great job: I was
independent, there was no time commitment, I made great money. I was in
and out in an hour and never saw the people again. In my non-sex-work
life, it's like going to a conference, doing a presentation and leaving,
versus going to work every day in the same place. It allowed me the
flexibility to do the other things-like get through law school. |
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Are bachelor parties really testosterone-fueled bacchanals that
degrade women?